Patients aren’t just losing face time with doctors these days. Patients’ access to medication and choice of pharmacy are also being undermined by health insurance middlemen, primarily in Medicare. What’s more, many Colorado-owned pharmacies are shut out, even after offering to accept the same terms and conditions to give patients more choice.

Letter-writer Monte Lynn Naylor stated that the people who are eligible for Medicare benefits today will receive much more compensation for medical expenses than they contributed through payroll taxes.

This compensation is not charity. Medicare recipients paid taxes for many years so that they could continue to meet their basic needs in their 60s and beyond. Even at current medical costs, the “high-earning taxpayers” of today can well afford to help out those people who supported them when the former were children.

Naylor also asked, “What ever happened to self-reliance and earning your own way?” The younger generation learned these values from the elders who displayed them all their working lives. In fact, many Medicare recipients are still employed or making money as entrepreneurs, and still paying income and payroll taxes. And don’t forget that Medicare recipients pay premiums for many of their medical expenses.

Cheryl G. Kasson, Denver

This letter was published in the Oct. 5 edition.

Don’t forget, Medicare isn’t free for most people. In addition to paying payroll Medicare taxes for years, I now pay around $340 a month for Medicare Parts B & D and a supplemental policy. Cheap compared to most private insurance plans, but it doesn’t cover dental work, most vision care, nor hearing aids.

It’s easy to criticize Medicare, but what’s your alternative solution? There are lots of retirees who’ve been self-reliant and paid their own way all their lives. But I guarantee you that if a private insurance company won’t cover a person, there are very few who could pay for an operation or cancer treatment or recovery from accidents out of their own private funds.

Hazel Bracewell, Twin Lakes

This letter was published in the Oct. 5 edition.

For information on how to send a letter to the editor, click here. Follow eLetters on Twitter to receive updates about new letters to the editor when they’re posted.

In the discussion of Medicare costs for the elderly in America, I find it incredible that no one is pointing out that the average person eligible for benefits today will receive somewhere between two and three times more in compensated medical cost than they contributed through their payroll taxes.

That amounts to between $100,000 to $150,000 of charity from high-earning taxpayers or money borrowed by the federal government (the borrowing is especially insidious, something for which we should be ashamed).

It seems that many people feel they are entitled to this bundle of cash just because they are citizens of this affluent country, whose affluence is quickly draining away.

What ever happened to self-reliance and earning your own way, values that once made this a great nation?

Monte Lynn Naylor, Denver

This letter was published in the Sept. 29 edition.

For information on how to send a letter to the editor, click here. Follow eLetters on Twitter to receive updates about new letters to the editor when they’re posted.

I was both pleased and disappointed by this article on health care and Social Security. U.S. Comptroller David M. Walker is awake enough to see problems, but can’t do enough to solve them. This is because Mr. Walker is not politically independent or non-partisan, he is just fiscally conservative. His solutions are that we cannot support our needs by paying what they will cost; we can only cut costs (and services). Raising taxes is a mortal sin. Read more…

As former Rockies season ticket-holders with indelible memories of Eric Young’s once-in-a-lifetime home run on April 9, 1993 — and observing their splendid run to the World Series this year from our new home in California — we look forward to returning to Denver and rooting on this marvelous team in a wonderful city. Read more…

Thank you for your editorial and strong support for SCHIP. With
9 million children in this country still uninsured, it is a moral
disgrace to veto or not support this bill. The objections raised by
the Republicans just don’t hold water. Read more…

Thank you to Diane Carmen for trying to put a human face on the suffering of children without health care in today’s column. I could not agree more with her statement referring to our leaders having medical benefits paid for by tax payers, while at the same time touting free market solutions for the people they are supposed to be working for. Read more…

For those who believe the market forces of health insurance companies work just fine, let me share my story. I am a hard working, tax paying American who has been self employed for over twenty years. Like other self employed citizens, I must purchase private health insurance. I have a high deductable and spend my health care dollars frugally. I avoid going to the doctor, mostly because I fear I may eventually be diagnosed with something that will make me uninsurable. Read more…

Unfortunately, Dr. Paul Hsieh’s free market prescription for health care reform is at best a placebo. He appropriately notes that procedures like Lasik and cosmetic surgery have little government intervention and work quite well on a cash basis. What he fails to note is that these two examples are among the few medical treatments that follow a basic rule of consumer goods: not purchasing the good is a reasonable decision. Read more…

The letters to the editor on this topic were disappointing. The first,
from a doctor in Sedalia, claims the free market works everywhere in
medicine because it has worked in LASIK and cosmetic surgery. This is a
false analogy because those two areas are elective medical procedures.
When you’re in a traumatic accident resulting in a medical emergency,
you don’t have time or even perhaps the capability to shop for services thereby invoking the consumer choice that is an important part of an
effective free market. Read more…

Guidelines: The Post welcomes letters up to 150 words on topics of general interest. Letters must include full name, home address, day and evening phone numbers, and may be edited for length, grammar and accuracy.

To reach the Denver Post editorial page by phone: 303-954-1331

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